See
/usr/local/texlive/2008/index.html
for links to documentation. The TeX Live web site (http://tug.org/texlive/)
contains any updates and corrections.
TeX Live is a joint project of the TeX user groups around the world;
please consider supporting it by joining the group best for you. The
list of groups is available on the web at http://tug.org/usergroups.html.
Add /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf/doc/man to MANPATH.
Add /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf/doc/info to INFOPATH.
Most importantly, add /usr/local/texlive/2008/bin/i386-freebsd
to your PATH for current and future sessions.
Welcome to TeX Live!

Choose setenv or export suitably to your shell.
My master's thesis built with texlive without any problems and looks the same as the one built using tetex package.

If you would like to get Tex Live 2009, the procedure will be similar I think, but TeX people did nit provided binaries for FreeBSD at 2009 version, so You will need to get these here: http://tug.org/pipermail/tex-live/2009-November/023783.html (thanks to Nikola Lečić)

There is also other way of installing TeX Live, here:http://code.google.com/p/freebsd-texlive/wiki/Installing

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

I mention that link at the end, yes we have pretty fsckud up case with (anything)TeX on FreeBSD, all people say thanks to Hiroki Sato for that, but I do not know the case.

Also tetex from ports works for me very good, but I create all images at inkscape in SVG and then inport them into *.tex document, so I do not need latest changes from TeX Live propably.

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

Also tetex from ports works for me very good, but I create all images at inkscape in SVG and then inport them into *.tex document, so I do not need latest changes from TeX Live propably.

You are oversimplifying things. Asymptote might be the largest peace of software to be added to TeXLive 2009 but it is definitely not the most significant.

There are two classical school of thoughts when it comes to figures in TeX. One school including Donald Knuth himself supports use of MetaPost language for creating the figures. MetaPost was created by one of his Ph.D. students based on MetaFont created by Don. Asymtote is the modern reincarnation
of MetaPost.

Another school of thought to which I belong believes in use of full
PostScript language via command special and clever hack by Timothy Van Zandt aka PSTricks.

As you can see I spend all of my adult life never having a need for MetaPost or Asymtote for that matter.

There is also a third relative new powerful system called PGF/TikZ with all the limitation of PDF format which is not really programmable language and it is ill suited for graphics comparing to PostScript. If you like Beamer class of LaTeX presentation you are PGF/TikZ .

What you described in your post is use of the package graphicx to
include the figures created by some vectorial drawing program like Inkscape, qcad, or my old time favorite Xfig.

That is not the point of TeXLive. The point of TeXLive is to painlessly install many changes in base fonts and programs as well as various new classes (in my case of LaTeX) documents. Using teTeX often require reinventing wheel and coding from the scratch thousands lines of cod which is already coded and created by somebody else.

I will give you simple example. Try using Powerdot class of LaTeX presentations and your teTeX.

You see Oko, I propably just does not care, I use things that work for me, SVG graphics scale greatly on my LaTeX documents, and I find a lot faster in creating them graphically, then writing lines of code to create graphics ... but I am not hardcore TeX user, I just use tools that make my work done in the way that I like and move along ...

So because of the way I work in LaTeX it does not matter for me if I use tetex of TeX Live 2009.

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

Thanks to Nicola Lecic, freebsd binaries are back in the main TL
repository -- both i386-freebsd and amd64-freebsd. They are included in
tonight's rebuild and will henceforth available in the installer. They
are built from the TL'09 release sources on FreeBSD 7.

I am SURE that he KNOWS how to do it, its just not HOW its SHOULD been done.

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

So, the question stands: Why isn't there a textproc/texlive port (or multiple textproc/textlive-*)? I understand that development/unstable ports aren't in the ports tree, but this has been going on for more than two years ...

(I know you don't make the ports by the way, just the packages ... I just find this an odd way of doing things).

__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.

Hi
On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 03:09:13PM +0200, Aldis Berjoza wrote:
> I was wondering, why texlive still isn't included in FreeBSD ports
> collection (Like normal ports)?
I really have to write a complete anwser for that question and post it
on the Internet: every once a while, I got it, and I answer with more or
less details, but, apart from the person asking the question nobody
knows how bad I feel regarding to this situation...
Because I don't have much time to do this, we'll have to wait a bit, so
I will only copy/paste parts of e-mais I have send to reply to this
question. There will be some redundancy, but you should have an idea of
what I feel at the end ;-)
If you want more details on some point, feel free to ask!
-----8<-------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:50:40 +0100
Well, as Hiroki Sato is also working on it and has explained how cool
are his ports in the ports@ mailing list, I have just done the easiest
for me to have a TeXLive setup working on my computer while there is no
official TeXLive ports in the FreeBSD ports tree. In other word, 1577
new ports, and you have to fix any other port depending on *TeX* that
fails by hand.
As it worked quite good (one you have all you want installed), and I
know at least one other person interested in having something --- even
somewhat broken --- *now*, I have just updated the freebsd-texlive
google group repository [1] with latest TeXLive packages, tinderbuilt
the 1577 ports and created a tag.
If you can't wait for Hiroki's ports, you can merge them in your FreeBSD
ports tree, using portshaker [2] for example.
References:
1. Link http://code.google.com/p/freebsd-texlive/source/list
2. Link http://bsd-sharp.googlecode.com/svn/branches/portshaker/
-----8<-------------------
-----8<-------------------
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2009 15:52:02 +0200
I found that the situation was stalled for years, so I fixed the issue
myself and announced it. My solution was not perfect but it was a
started. However, some people have been "active" on the topic for years
and where not very happy with this.
Link http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2008-December/051895.html
Link http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2009-February/053195.html
So I decided to notstay with a ``not perfect, just working'' solution
and set up a set of scripts that should update everything on a daily
basis (if updates are available):
Link http://romain.blogreen.org/Blog/2009/05/TeXLive_for_FreeBSD_updated
Then I stopped thinking about it: I have TeXLive on my system and feel
very happy now! There is no plan to send a PR with 1577 new ports since
another solution that have been cooking for many years is supposed to be
available soon (soon have already been announced years ago, if you know
what I mean).
-----8<-------------------
(translated on the fly, sorry if it's not clear, I am quite busy, but if
I don't do this right now, I will never do it :-/ )
-----8<-------------------
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 12:50:22 +0100
This is a somehow complex story... As of TeXLive 2008, it works (I
started to update to 2009 but since the project is not really fun, I
postponed it), but nothing will be pushed in the tree.
Everything began when I was too bored of using teTeX and seeing mails
of people saying "I am going to create TeXLive ports for FreeBSD" and
doing nothing. I did the work, and only then spoke about this in the
FreeBSD mailing-lists:
Link http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2008-December/051895.html
The thread is quite interesting, and this message from Hiroki Sato in
particular: he has been working on "TeXLive on FreeBSD" for 5 years
now:
Link http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2008-December/051899.html
Since that, no news... officially at least. I received a mail from him
where he tells me that everything is still staled in his work, that there
where some murder investigations at him working location, and that if I
wanted to help I just had to tell him, which I did, but I got no news
since that date.
I don't want to fight with him: I proposed a solution to provide TeXLive
on FreeBSD; I told him I was okay to help him improve his solution to
the same problem; and I have no news... I don't mind, I do have what I
need, it's just stupid to not make it available for everybody easily.
At some point, I though I could update to TeXLive 2009, and for that
occasion post to ports@ some message to say "TeXLive 2009 is available
in the FreeBSD-TeXLive repository!", and see if something happens... but
that was not as easy as I though (it compiles but some parts seems
to be missing, e.g. xelatex) and I don't have the motivation to go
further on (that being said, I happily accept patches!).
-----8<-------------------
-----8<-------------------
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 01:30:05 +0100
Hum, last time I wrote a single mail with both the 'TeXLive' and 'ports'
words to ports@, I got a reply from Hiroki Sato (hrs@) basically
telling me that he was on it for a while and about to commit something.
I got some news from time to time, basically telling me that he was
stalled.
The thread starts here (but I guess some messages are not attached to
the thread):
Link http://markmail.org/thread/4cpz57xhraguh6qx
Since a better solution was supposed to be pushed quickly, I just
enhanced my early hack to have TeXLive before it reach the ports tree.
I already did 2 updates for new TeXLive infrastructures, and my ports
are updated on a daily basis. This fits my needs but I don't plan to
push it because it's still a hack: Hiroki's ports are supposed to split
all tools installed by the single print/texlive-core package. For now,
this port is a requirement for all other freebsd-texlive ports; it
installs a LOT of binaries and most of them are useless to most users.
Maybe you can ask hrs@ if he has any news or is wanting any help (I
offered my help 2 years ago, but while he accepted it, I got no call for
help from that time). In late 2008, he said « I have three sort of
experimental ports of texlive now ». I really would like to know what
is the situation today...
To sum up my position:
- I don't want to waste my time doing something somebody is supposed to
be working on;
- I use TeXLive (mainly XeTeX) on a regular basis so I don't mind
maintaining the freebsd-texlive project until some better solution is
deployed in the FreeBSD ports tree;
- I am okay to help setting up a new infrastructure (but I have very
few free time compared to the situation 2 years ago).
-----8<-------------------
One more point, I received a mail with strong feelings (troll /
flamewar) about all this. Since it is somebody else mail, and I don't
know if the author would like or not me to forward it, I prefer to not
copy/paste it to you unless you agree to not share it with anybody else.
Just tell me that it's okay for you. It does not contain any
revelation, but if you remove the part of trolling, it can be an
interesting reading (and it changed the way I maintained
FreeBSD-TeXLive).
> It works pretty dam well :D (except from distfiles without version
> numbers)
Thanks! For sure your contributions makes it even better! And no, I
have not forgotten the issues on google-code which are still open ;-)
I will probably not be at home next week, and might not have an Internet
access, so in case of request, don't be surprised if I don't reply.
Romain

Hopefully he will explain all this on some website soon

Frankly If you ask me there is Only One FreeBSD TexLive project, and that is http://code.google.com/p/freebsd-texlive/
If there is anything else, it's a joke (try to search FreeBSD texlive, on google, yahoo, yandex or ixquick - Only one FreeBSD TexLive project)

__________________religions, worst damnation of mankind"If 386BSD had been available when I started on Linux, Linux would probably never had happened." Linus TorvaldsLinux is not UNIX! Face it! It is not an insult. It is fact: GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX”.vermaden's:linksresourcesdeviantartspreadbsd

I actually sent an email to the "TexLive guy" (I forgot who exactly, I got the name from ports@ IIRC) about three years ago asking if he needed help, the reply I got was "Just working out the last details, should be ready for ports soon".

This is also about the same I've heard about anyone since...

... I wonder how many potential people who *could* have helped make a working TeX port in the ports tree have been blown off like that over the years ...

Back then I was working with TeX and cared ... Now I don't anymore ... Sorry ...

__________________
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.